Gerard Koekkoekartist • painter • watercolourist • draughtsmanHilversum 1871-1956

The tradition among the Koekkoek painters of the master-journeyman relationship between father and child continues with Jan H.B. and his son Gerardus Johannes. Gerard, as he is known, is initially taught by his father. After that he was apprenticed to the impressionist landscape painter H.W. Jansen and he learns etching with Pieter Dupont. Gerard was born in Hilversum, where several Koekkoeks had already lived for a short or longer period. His father lived and worked there from 1864 until his death. His uncle Barend Hendrik and great-uncle Barend Cornelis and Marinus Adrianus also stayed in Hilversum for a number of years. Barend Cornelis was part of a lively painters' colony of cattle and landscape painters, including P.G. van Os and Albertus Verhoesen, who settled in Hilversum in the 1920s and searched for their subjects in the hilly forest and meadow landscape of the Gooi region. Gerard Koekkoek left Hilversum, lived in Amsterdam, The Hague and Vlissingen, among others, and made study trips to Germany and France. He painted and drew, but was mainly a graphic artist (etchings, lithographs and woodcuts). In addition, he was also skilled in the restoration of paintings. His work is impressionistic in style and shows a preference for the water-rich Dutch landscape: a polder mill on a canal, a fishing village on the Zuiderzee or the bustling inner harbor of a city.